Quote

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
Robert J. Shiller

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely - the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”
-Jean-paul Sartre

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” -Albert Camus

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, Where is the director? I want to see him.” - Soren Kierkegaard

Foucault Quote

"I dream of the intellectual destroyer of evidence and universality, the one who, in the inertias and constraints of the present locates and marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of force, who incessantly displaces himself, doesn't know exactly where he is heading nor what he'll think tomorrow because he is too attentive to the present..." - Foucault

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

It's so true! Doubters are the best (and safest!) kind of people to have around - save me from certainty and fanaticism.

(from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats - reprinted below.)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

imaplanck. wrote:Michael Faraday in reply to the (then) prime minister: "Well sir, theres a good chance that one day you will be able to tax it".

I really like this quote.

I am trying to imagine the context. Wasn't Faraday self-educated and worked as lab assistant for some big-shot? It may have been a case where the techie working in the lab makes the most essential discoveries.

I think the UK of that time was very class conscious, so in a way it is even surprising that a working-class person like Faraday would ever be conversing with the Prime Minister. But on top of that, there is even a kind of witty implied put-down! At least that's how it sounds.

"Mr. Faraday pray tell, what possible earthly use is there to this electricity stuff? It's just a toy to play with in the laboratory, isn't it?"

"Well, sir, some day you'll be putting a tax on it. That's a practical enough use from your standpoint."

I'm just paraphrasing. Would like to get more detail and context on this

``When Gladstone was British Prime Minister he visited Michael Faraday's laboratory and asked if some esoteric substance called `Electricity' would ever have practical significance.

"One day, sir, you will tax it." was the answer.''

(Quoted in Science, 1994). As Michael Saunders points out, this can not be correct because Faraday died in 1867 and Gladstone became PM in 1868. A more plausible PM would be Peel as electricity was discovered in 1831. Equally well it may be an `urbane legend'.

``When Gladstone was British Prime Minister he visited Michael Faraday's laboratory and asked if some esoteric substance called `Electricity' would ever have practical significance.

"One day, sir, you will tax it." was the answer.''

(Quoted in Science, 1994). As Michael Saunders points out, this can not be correct because Faraday died in 1867 and Gladstone became PM in 1868. A more plausible PM would be Peel as electricity was discovered in 1831. Equally well it may be an `urbane legend'.

'Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.'- Antonin Artaud

'So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.'- Winston Churchill

I have this aphorism by Nietzsche photocopied and attached to my bulletin board:

Work and boredom.- Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery if only it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise, their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure: they actually require a lot of boredom if their work is to succeed. For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that disagreeable "windless calm" of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds. They have to bear it and must wait for its effect on them. Precisely this is what lesser natures cannot achieve by any means. To ward off boredom at any cost is vulgar, no less than work without pleasure. Perhaps Asians are distinguished above Europeans by a capacity for longer, deeper calm; even their opiates have a slow effect and require patience, as opposed to the disgusting suddenness of the European poison, alcohol. - The Gay Science (tr. W. Kaufmann) - Book I, 42

"There is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest. Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." - Friedrich Nietzsche ("On Those Who Are Sublime" - Thus Spoke Zarathrustra)